Have Some Milk With Your Memories
by Sullen Kitty
Summary: Oneshot. Alex Eames thinks about her partner over her morning cup of coffee. Playful morning banter with Bobby ensues.


Title: Have Some Milk With Your Memories

Title: Have Some Milk With Your Memories

Summary: Alex Eames thinks about her partner over her morning cup of coffee. Playful morning banter with Bobby ensues.

Disclaimer: I don't own Alex or Bobby. Yet.

--

Alex raced to catch the door to the station before it closed. Jeez, it was absolutely freezing outside, she thought, her chin buried in her scarf, catching the cold metal handle just before the door slammed shut. She stepped inside the building and sighed. It was cold inside, too.

She cupped her hands around the hot cup of coffee she carried and blew on it, inhaling the fragrant aroma. Starbucks had a new roast, and she couldn't wait to try it out.

She set the cup down on her already memo-covered desk and shrugged off her coat and scarf, chucking the hat onto one of Bobby's stupid Mets bobble heads. She smirked. He was going to have a fit when he came in and saw it.

She sat down with a sigh and took a sip of her coffee. She closed her eyes. Was there nothing Starbucks couldn't do? Even black it was delicious. Bit by bit, Starbucks was taking over the world with their amazing coffee, and she was their most faithful slave, to say the least.

She smiled to herself. Bobby hated Starbucks. Claimed they were the corporate giants who were trying to kill the little guys. He always bought his coffee from the old vendor outside the building.

Bobby….

She sighed again and settled back comfortably into her chair, getting ready for some serious ruminating.

Before she'd met him – and sometimes even now, come to think of it – the name "Bobby" had always brought to her mind pictures of a little boy in a too-big baseball cap playing catch with his dad.

She grinned to herself. Oh, the irony. Well, at least the love of baseball part was right.

Bobby had spent most of his life hiding from – everything. His façade was intimidating, to say the least, but when someone had the balls to get past it they were definitely rewarded for their efforts.

He was a big guy, sure. A bit daunting, yeah. He was insightful – too insightful, sometimes, for his own good, but she managed to temper him most of the time. He was grateful for that, she knew: grateful for the way she distracted the other officers when he was leisurely perusing the victim in his own way, grateful she listened to him, grateful that, while she wasn't quite able to keep up with his thought process, she let him bounce things off of her and, when she had caught up, engulfed her small insights and added them to his own.

They'd solved countless murders this way, completed too many pictures to count. They needed each other, she knew. Her work gave him the proof he needed to go along with his theories, and his theories were, more often than not, the reason they solved the cases in the first place.

Alex shook her head. He wasn't perfect, not even close, but Bobby was the closest she'd ever come to the fabled legend of The Perfect Guy.

Every time she went out with someone, her thoughts always inevitably traveled back to him, and she ended up nitpicking at her date's flaws… he didn't tilt his head right, was one she'd recently caught herself thinking. Why was she thinking that? He didn't do the patented Goren Head Tilt, that was why; his eyes didn't crystal over and gaze straight into the perp's, his mop of curly greying hair didn't fall right.

Except then she realized she was thinking about Bobby and immediately returned her attention back to her date, who by then was so weirded out by the chick who'd been out of it half the night that the dinner never lasted long.

Alex pursed her lips. She shouldn't be thinking about Bobby during dates at all, anyway. He was her partner – a big part of life, some would say huge, especially as they were both single and lonely – but they were merely friends.

Close friends, who'd comforted each other many a night and hung out almost every weekend as well as weekdays and knew just about every intimate detail of each other's lives.

Really, really close friends?

Christ, Alex thought. It's like we're married or something. But 'or something' is the key phrase there. We know everything about each other because we're partners who happen to be very close friends. We hang out every weekend because we enjoy each other's company.

Even as she tried to justify her reasons, they sounded weak.

A large hand waved a little container in front of her face. "Some milk with your memories, Eames?"

She looked up, snapped out of her reverie. There was Bobby, holding a steaming cup of his own coffee. She accepted the tiny thing of milk. "Thanks," she said, realizing lamely that her coffee had gone from being hot and delicious to lukewarm.

Bobby threw down the day's newspaper on her desk, opened to the sports section. "Check it out, Eames!" he crowed. "Another win for the Mets!" He pumped his fists into the air, dancing like a silly goon. "Davis owes me twenty bucks. I told him they'd beat the Cardinals."

Alex raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Another side affect of the famous Goren Intuition?"

"No," Bobby said smugly, "the Mets are just way better than the Cardinals."

Alex laughed and sipped her coffee. "Bet your vendor crap doesn't taste as good as this baby right here," she teased, waggling the cup in front of him as he sat down.

Bobby snorted. "My coffee doesn't put people out of work, Eames," he said, trying to pawn himself off as altruistic.

She snorted and took another sip, flipping the paper open to the front page.

She heard him gasp. "Eames!"

She looked up and saw him staring at the red wooly hat she'd tossed carelessly over his bobble head. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see your obscenely large collection of bobble heads there or anything, I swear," she sniggered.

In answer Bobby threw the hat onto a nearby chair and lobbed a pencil towards her, hitting the desired mark – her coffee. It sank like a stone.

Alex gasped as Bobby laughed. "Don't dis the Mets, Eames."

She gave him a delighted sneer and drained the cup anyway, hearing his disgusted gag with satisfaction. When she was done she plunked the cup on her desk and smacked her lips. "Ah. Can't beat Starbucks coffee," she said, winking as she tossed the pencil back to him.

Bobby caught it and held it with the tips of his fingers. "This is diseased. I'm going to go throw this out."

Alex laughed as he walked away. The famous Detective Robert Goren, examiner of dramatically traumatized corpses, grossed out by a pencil in a coffee cup.

She grinned and spat into the empty cup. She was too.


End file.
